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Monday, 25 November 2013

Last week was my turn on the rota for cake at work. We
have a big team briefing every Friday known affectionately as the “Friday cake
meeting” – there’s a rota with each week assigned to a member of the team! It’s
taken very seriously! Unfortunately, I have set a rather strong precedent and
so I had people telling me all week that they were excited about what I was going
to produce on Friday – talk about pressure!

The trouble with the Friday cake meeting is that it is on
a Friday! This means that you have to bake on a week night after work and as it
had been a long week, I wasn’t up for making anything fancy! To complicate
things further, we have one person who is gluten-intolerant and one person who
is allergic to nuts and eggs! They always insist that they don’t want people to
go to extra effort for them but I wanted to ensure that I catered for them
both.

I decided to go with the gluten-free lemon polenta cake that
I made earlier in the week (which was a bit of a disaster as I miscalculated
and used too few eggs – having drowned the resulting cake in lots of lemon
syrup, it was edible but nowhere near perfect – fail!) and two new recipes:
toffee apple crumble cake and these orange and cinnamon shortbread biscuits.

I’d seen this Cookie’s cakes and Bakesrecipe on Pinterest a little while ago and had pinned it onto my Christmas Baking board. It seemed
a nice simple recipe that would work well as little baked Christmas presents,
or as part as a Christmas hamper. It’s also conveniently egg-free and so this
seemed like a great opportunity to try it out.

It’s a great simple and speedy recipe and would be great
for making with kids. I used my favourite teapot cookie cutter and simply
dusted the cooked biscuits with icing sugar, but you could drizzle with
chocolate, or an orange blossom flavoured water icing. You could also vary the
flavouring – adding lemon zest, or vanilla essence, or other spices. Or you
could add chopped chocolate, or dried fruit, or anything else you fancy!

The resulting biscuits are short and crispy. They will
lose their crisp crunch after a day but they will last fine for at least a
week. I actually prefer them once they are a day old and are a bit softer, but
that’s probably a matter of taste!

Sunday, 24 November 2013

Having had the girls over for a girly evening (complete
with chocolate and raspberry brownies, lemon polenta cake, gossip and Coyote
Ugly!), they left at about 11.00 on Sunday morning and I realised that I was
out for a late lunch for a friend’s birthday, so I should whip up something
quick and tasty as a small gift.

I didn’t have the time or energy to make anything too
extravagant, so when I found orange-flavoured dark chocolate in the cupboard, I
decided that I could make some quick and delicious chocolate orange cookies.
These cookies are usually made with 450g of dark chocolate, so it was easy to
replace with the orange-flavoured dark chocolate. I only had 300g of this, so I
added 100g milk chocolate and 50g of chopped up orange matchmakers! You could probably also make with all orange-flavoured
milk chocolate (but they may be a little too sweet), or all dark chocolate, but
I think the mix worked particularly well. I also replaced the vanilla extract
in the original recipe with the zest of an orange.

I’ve added a rest stage for the cookie mixture into my
method below. I didn’t do this when I made these cookies and, as you can see
from the picture, they spread out too much and so were a bit thin (but still
delicious!). I didn’t fit all of the mixture onto my baking trays, so had to do
a second batch (of 3) once the first were cooked. This batch stayed much thicker
and so I have added the rest stage in!

Overall, I’m not generally a big chocolate fan, but these
are absolutely delicious! Rich, chewy, chocolatey, with a nice fresh orangey
zing! They’d make fantastic Christmas presents. EHH loved these and so I’ll
definitely be making these again.

Chocolate orange cookies

(makes 12-14 large cookies)

Ingredients

50g butter

350g orange flavoured dark chocolate, roughly chopped

100g milk chocolate, roughly chopped

2 eggs

170g soft light brown sugar

Zest of one orange

85g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

Recipe

Line 2 baking trays with baking parchment.

Put the butter, the milk chocolate and half of the
orange-flavoured dark chocolate in a heat-proof bowl.

Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and
stir gently until the chocolate and butter are melted and combined.

Beat the eggs, sugar and orange zest in a bowl until
frothy.

Pour in the chocolate mixture, beating on a slow speed
until combined.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl.

In three additions, stir the chocolate mixture into the flour.

Stir in the remaining chocolate.

Leave for 20-30 minutes to allow the mixture to firm up a
bit.

Pre-heat the oven to 170C.

Dollop the cookie mixture onto the two prepared baking
trays, allowing plenty of room between each, as the cookies will spread.

Bake for 10 – 15 minutes, until the top of the cookies start
to crack, the sides of the cookies are firm but the centre still fairly squidgy.

Last weekend, EHH was off on a boys’ weekend and I had a
couple of my friends over for a girly night. EHH was disappearing off during
the day on Friday, so I whipped up a quick batch of chocolate and raspberry brownies on the Thursday night for him to take with him.

With EHH gone, I had Saturday to myself to potter in the
kitchen and so I decided to have a go at a new recipe that I had spotted in BBC
Good Food magazine – a gluten-free lemon polenta cake. I had a few brownies
left for dessert for the girls but thought that this would be a good
alternative. This week was also my week for Friday cakes at work, so I figured it would
be a good opportunity to practise a gluten-free cake to take in with me later
in the week.

I was a bit wary about tackling this recipe: it required
a 25cm tin and I don’t have one, so I had to adapt it to fit in a 20cm tin. As
the original recipe required 300g butter, 300g sugar, 300g ground almonds and
150g polenta, it seemed fairly easy to do two-thirds of the recipe and hope
that it worked out ok for the tin! The recipe asked for 5 eggs, so I decided to
go with 3 eggs and 1 yolk. I decided to
up the lemon zing and added the zest of 3 lemons rather than 2. As usual, I
wrapped the cake tin in my magi-cake cake strips before baking and these really
helped it to rise and bake evenly.

It’s actually a really easy cake to make and, fortunately,
fitted perfectly in the 20cm deep tin. The cake is light and zingy, with rich
almond sweetness and texture from the polenta. The texture isn’t that of a
normal sponge, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a “gluten-free” poor relative
cake. Once soaked in syrup and dusted in icing sugar, it looks elegant and
delicious, and would be a great addition to a refined afternoon tea. Definitely
a cake that I’ll be making again!

Lemon polenta cake

Ingredients

200g butter, at room temperature

200g golden caster sugar

200g ground almonds

Finely grated zest of 2-3 lemons

3 large eggs and 1 egg yolk

Icing sugar (to dust)

For the lemon syrup

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp icing sugar

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Grease and line a 20cm deep cake tin.

Beat the butter and sugar in a stand mixer until light
and fluffy (at least 5 minutes).

Add the ground almonds, polenta and lemon zest.

Beat until combined.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well until smooth
(it will still be a fairly thick mixture).

Spoon the mixture into the tin and spread evenly.

Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden and springy.

Remove from the oven and place the tin on a wire rack to
cool for 10 minutes.

While it is cooling, place the lemon juice and icing
sugar in a bowl and microwave for 45 seconds, until boiling and syrupy.

Monday, 11 November 2013

This week, I’ve been given another big bag of Bramley
apples so I’ve been flicking through Pinterest to find some new Bramley apple
recipes. Whilst browsing, I found this fab looking cake and followed it through
to Cookie’s Cakes and Bakes (CCB) – a lovely baking blog with lots of delicious
looking recipes (like her coconut and lime drizzle cake – yum! Will be trying
this one out!). I just love custard but
had a bit of a failure when I last tried making a custard cake, however, I couldn’t
resist giving this one a go.

It’s not a quick cake to make: firstly you need to make
the custard, then the cake, then peel, core and slice the apples before
arranging them neatly on top of the cake! However, it is worth the effort! I
followed the recipe given by CCB almost exactly; the only thing that I changed
was the addition of the apricot jam glaze, which just helped the cake to look
that bit more special.

I love the custard layer running through this cake; the
texture of the cake is great and the apples on the top are delicious. However,
like last time that I made a custard cake, I found that the custard powder in
the actual cake leaves a dry taste in your mouth. I’ll definitely be making
this cake again (would be also be fantastic with rhubarb) but next time, I’ll leave out the custard powder and simply up
the flour (which is the recipe I have given below).

Bramley apple and custard cake

Ingredients

200g soft butter

110g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

225g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tablespoons milk (at room temperature)

3-4 Bramley apples, peeled cored and cut into slices

Demerara sugar for sprinkling over the cake

2 tblsp apricot jam, warmed and sieved to remove any
lumps

For the custard:

2 tablespoons custard powder

55g caster sugar

250ml milk

20g butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Grease a 20cm deep cake tin and line the bottom of the
tin with baking parchment (or simply line with a non-stick cake tin liner –
much easier!).

Mix together the custard powder and caster sugar in a
saucepan.

Whisk in the milk, stirring over a medium heat until the
custard thickens.

Take the custard off the heat and stir in the butter and
vanilla extract.

Pour into a bowl, place some clingfilm over the top
(making sure that it touches the surface of the custard to prevent it forming a
skin) and leave to cool.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar
until very light and fluffy (at least 5 minutes in a stand mixer).

Beat in the eggs, one at a time until the mixture is
frothy and mousse-like. Add a tablespoon of the flour with each egg to stop the
mixture curdling.

Gently stir in remaining flour.

Mix in 2 tablespoons of milk to loosen the batter a
little.

Spread half the batter in the cake tin.

Spread the cooled custard all over the batter.

Use a small spatula to carefully spread the remaining batter
over the custard, making sure that all the custard is covered with batter.

Place your apple slices over the top of the cake.

Sprinkle Demerara sugar all over the cake.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until risen and golden. A
skewer inserted in the middle of the cake should come out clean.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes and then remove from the tin
and place on a wire rack.

Use a pastry brush to brush the top of the cake with the
warmed apricot jam.